


the spaces between

by nocturnes



Category: DBSK | Tohoshinki | TVfXQ | TVXQ, EXO (Band), SHINee, f(x)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Established Relationship, F/M, Graduation, Harry potter verse, Locker Room, M/M, Pining, Potions Accident, Quidditch, RPF, Unrequited Crush, boys being dumb, dealing with impending separation, dorm room makeouts, experimental magical steroids, mediation by a friend
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-05
Updated: 2014-01-05
Packaged: 2018-01-07 14:09:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1120781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nocturnes/pseuds/nocturnes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jongin is in denial, Chanyeol has been experimenting, and Amber and Joonmyun try to hold it all together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the spaces between

**Author's Note:**

> originally for [](http://natsudive.livejournal.com/profile)[**natsudive**](http://natsudive.livejournal.com/) at [](http://runandgun.livejournal.com/profile)[**runandgun**](http://runandgun.livejournal.com/) [here](http://runandgun.livejournal.com/30918.html)
> 
> 1\. I disregarded ages in some places where it helped me work out the school years, and house selection in most cases was more about where I needed people to be than it was about matching personality traits. I know next to nothing about Super Junior/SHINee so I am sorry if I totally butchered any of those characterizations. ;;
> 
> 2\. The prompts were wonderful, honestly. :) Also omg it was so much fun writing Amber, so thank you for that prompt, ahhh. I AM RIDICULOUSLY IN LOVE WITH HER. GOD. ;__; coughs. /amberpleasebemygirlfriend I just really wanted to write her in a relationship with a guy like this because gender presentation =/= sexual orientation and I wish people would understand this.
> 
> 3\. Thank you so, so much to everyone who read pieces of this over for me, and who cheered me on while I was working on it, because I really (really really) couldn’t have managed this without you. ♥

 

“I’ve been experimenting,” Chanyeol starts, bouncing from foot to foot as he stands over the wizard’s chess board that Baekhyun and Zitao have set up out under the tree by the lake.  
  
It’s the first day of spring that has been warm enough to take advantage of the weather, and Baekhyun wants to enjoy it while he can. He had pulled a reluctant Zitao out of the Slytherin common room as soon as he had gotten the chance.  
  
“Any collateral damage?” Baekhyun asks, moving his knight over and frowning when Zitao smiles slightly, directing his queen to that square immediately.  
  
“Check.” Baekhyun scowls at the board. He has never been much good at chess.  
  
“Just some first year’s books,” Chanyeol says, waving his hand vaguely. Baekhyun directs his castle towards one of Zitao’s remaining pawns in a last-ditch attempt at saving himself. “There was an unrelated incident involving some pumpkin juice. Nothing important.”  
  
Zitao snorts. He pushes his queen forward one last time, and Baekhyun winces as she attacks his king viciously with her sceptre. “Checkmate,” Zitao says.  
  
“I’m weirdly proud of you,” Baekhyun says, leaning back on his hands and squinting up at Chanyeol through the brightness of the mid-afternoon sunlight. “You’ve already exceeded my expectations for the length of your life by five years. Didn’t think you’d make it past first year, for a bit there.”  
  
“I know you’re interested,” Chanyeol says, his smile creeping into his voice, and Baekhyun could pick up on that tone anywhere. It would send the large majority of people running for cover, but Byun Baekhyun is not just anyone else.  
  
“Am I ever not?” he says, pushing himself up off the grass. Now that he can look more directly, there is something just a little off about Chanyeol’s usual smile. Normally it’s overbearing enough, but it’s too tense around the edges of his mouth this time, and it’s unnerving.  
  
“Are you coming, Zitao?” Chanyeol asks, before Baekhyun can comment. Baekhyun watches with amusement while the tips of Zitao’s ears flush as he stares resolutely at the grass, picking out individual blades one by one.  
  
“No,” Zitao says. “Victoria and her friends are going swimming in the lake this afternoon, and when I was in the common room earlier they sort of invited anyone else who wanted to come, I think, so I—”  
  
“You’re completely hopeless,” Baekhyun cuts in, grinning down at him. “The lake is freezing right now, so have fun with that.” He nudges Zitao’s s foot with his until he looks up at him. “Tell me about it at dinner, yeah?”  
  
“Okay,” Zitao says, biting his lip. “Good luck with… whatever it is. I don’t think I even want to know.”  
  
“You’re missing out, my friend,” Chanyeol says. He’s positively buzzing with energy now, bouncing up and down on the tips of his toes so fast he almost looks like he’s hovering in place. “This is my best one yet.”  
  
“I feel like I should be afraid,” Baekhyun says, waving goodbye to Zitao and then moving to follow Chanyeol back up towards the castle.  
  
“You’re not, though, right?” Chanyeol says, once they’re a little farther away. “You never are.”  
  
“Not even a little,” Baekhyun says. Usually he would mean it with conviction, but he isn’t so sure this time. “Race you back to the common room?”  
  
“I’m going to crush you and your tiny little legs,” Chanyeol says, speeding ahead.  
  
“You’re on,” Baekhyun calls out. Chanyeol already has a huge lead, more than should technically be possible. For now, Baekhyun doesn’t question it, and he follows after.  
  
\--  
  
“The Saturday after next,” Jongin says, hunching further over his open star chart and the chunk of parchment functioning as his sight diary, “I will… fall asleep in my pumpkin juice over breakfast and tragically drown in ten centimetres of liquid. Because of Saturn.”  
  
“Can’t,” Sehun says, scratching in another entry on his messily scrawled out parchment. “I’m drowning in orange juice the Tuesday before because of Jupiter.”  
  
Jongin sighs, throwing his quill down on the table. The Gryffindor common room is almost eerily empty for this time of day, and when he looks out the window, he can see the grounds scattered with people out enjoying the weather while it lasts. The last thing Jongin wants is to be stuck inside on a Thursday afternoon working on Divination homework, but their captain Minho is running Quidditch practice every night until the Cup. The match is on the coming Sunday, the day before this Divination project is due, so Jongin doesn’t have much choice.  
  
When he peers across the table, Sehun already has his chart three quarters of the way full, and Jongin doesn’t know how he missed that happening.  
  
“Why did I listen to you when you told me we should take another year of this? _Come on, Jongin. It won’t be that bad, Jongin. We’ve already gotten through two years, Jongin._ We could be outside right now.”  
  
Sehun kicks at Jongin’s shins underneath the table, eyes never leaving his own parchment. “This is better than the hell that was Arithmancy with Professor Cho. Someone in that class has probably suffocated under all of the homework by now.”  
  
Jongin scrunches up his nose in response. Professor Cho had a habit of assigning triple the amount of homework that would have been reasonable, just to see who could take it. The only one who had ever managed to hand anything in totally complete was Krystal, and he’s pretty sure that had a lot to do with her competitive streak. Sehun has a fair point.  
  
“I’m going to hate you for eternity if this messes up our chances at the Cup.”  
  
Sehun shifts up to look at Jongin slowly, tilting his head to the left while his tongue pokes out the side of his mouth. Then he smiles, just barely, and Jongin’s stomach feels like it’s twisting over itself. He knows that look all too well by now, and it never fails to send a flush creeping up the sides of his neck, even if he never wants to try to put a label on why.  
  
“No you won’t,” Sehun says, so matter-of-fact that Jongin couldn’t argue even if he wanted to.  
  
He can feel the flush rising to his cheeks now, because Sehun is right, but he doesn’t want to take that thought further than he has to. He clears his throat, turning to look at the view of the lake visible through the window. Some girls are swimming there, dotted across the shore in bright colours that stand out against the black robes and white shirts everyone else is wearing. The water must be freezing, but it sounds better than being here. “I just don’t want to lose if I can help it,” he says, finally.  
  
“I’m on the team too,” Sehun says, discarding his quill as well after he scratches an answer into the last box on his parchment. “It’s not like it doesn’t matter to me.”  
  
Jongin can admit that Sehun is a good player, but he hesitates too much before he makes a move, which is why he’s slotted as an alternate under Minho’s system. Jongin has played in every single match, but he’s too impulsive and doesn’t share the Quaffle enough. To some extent, he knows that Minho only keeps him on because of how often he tends to score, and that Sehun might actually be a better choice.  
  
He watches the way Sehun’s bangs fall into his eyes, caught in the light from the window, and his mouth feels suddenly dry.  
  
“You’re there in case someone gets clobbered by a stray Bludger, Sehun. You haven’t played all season, and you don’t actually _do_ anything. Extra practice really doesn’t matter for you.”  
  
Sehun glares at him, pushing himself up straighter in his chair and crossing his arms over his chest. He opens his mouth to retort just as the portrait hole bangs open, making them both jump a little in their seats.  
  
The first thing to emerge is a mess of red curls, followed by the rest of Park Chanyeol, who spots them and waves wildly. Jongin manages a small, slightly awkward wave back, because Chanyeol plays Beater on the team, and he feels like he should. He would never admit it out loud, but Chanyeol kind of scares him.  
  
Chanyeol lingers near the entranceway, bouncing on his toes as he stares vacantly at the stone wall next to the portrait hole. Maybe all of this Divination is messing with his head, but from where Jongin is sitting, Chanyeol looks like he’s shaking, and there is an odd sort of energy to him that Jongin can feel emanating outwards even from across the room.  
  
Baekhyun pops through the portrait hole about a minute later, panting hard. He’s the team’s other Beater, so Jongin lifts a hand to wave to him as well. He leaves it hanging there in mid-air for a moment as he watches Baekhyun grab Chanyeol around the wrist and drag him up the stairs towards the sixth year boys’ dorm.  
  
“Did something seem… off about Chanyeol to you?” Jongin asks, once he’s sure that both he and Baekhyun have disappeared.  
  
Sehun huffs, pulling all of his pieces of parchment together and closing them into his Divination textbook. “Not as much as what’s wrong with you.”  
  
“I didn’t mean—” Jongin starts, as Sehun shoves his chair away from the table. “Where are you going?”  
  
“To do nothing,” Sehun says, projecting his voice back over his shoulder as he makes his way over to the portrait hole. He pauses right before he gets to it, his left hand reaching over to splay against the stone of the wall, his book cradled in the crook of his other elbow. The look on his face now frightens Jongin even more than it had before, because it’s the schooled blankness that Sehun wears around everyone else, but never with him. “You know, like usual? I’m good at it, apparently.”  
  
He climbs out of the portrait hole and into the hallway before Jongin can get a word in, and Jongin at least knows better than to follow. He sits in his chair, staring at the spot where Sehun had stood until his eyes go blurry and he can’t gauge how much time has passed. When he finally gets up, it’s only because he had set his elbow on his discarded quill, and he can feel the ink starting to seep into his sleeve.  
  
\--  
  
“You didn’t have to drag me,” Chanyeol says, after Baekhyun has shoved him unceremoniously through the door to the sixth year boys’ dorm. Baekhyun glances around the room belatedly to make sure they’re alone, breathing a sigh of relief when he sees that they are.  
  
“What are you doing?” Baekhyun asks, and it comes out more hysterical than he had meant it to. “The way Jongin and Sehun were staring—god, Chanyeol. This isn’t just a prank this time, you did something else.”  
  
Chanyeol plops himself down on his four-poster, leaning back to lie with his hands underneath his head. As he stares up at the canopy, his left ankle comes up to rest over his right knee. His foot shakes as he lies there, but there’s something off about that too, like there had been with his smile out at the lake. Baekhyun can sense the energy thrumming through Chanyeol much better now that he is still, and it’s strong enough that he wonders if it would transfer if he stood too close.  
  
“Are you going to let me show you now?” Chanyeol asks. “You don’t usually make this big of a deal about anything I do.”  
  
“Yeah, well, you don’t usually do bizarre science experiments using yourself as the test subject,” Baekhyun mumbles. When Chanyeol sits up to ask what that means, he waves him off. Despite how he probably sounds, he has to admit that he’s more than just a little curious. He sighs, resigning himself. “All right, do it.”  
  
“Thought you’d never ask,” Chanyeol says, moving to open his trunk. “I’ve been working on this for about three months, and I still need to work out some kinks, but today is the first day where it’s both come close to doing what I want and didn’t have too many bad side-effects.”  
  
“Do I even want to know what the side-effects were before?” Chanyeol doesn’t answer.  
  
He emerges from rummaging around in his trunk with a small, stoppered glass vial. It’s filled about two thirds of the way up with an electric blue liquid, and when he holds it up close to Baekhyun’s face, Baekhyun can see little bubbles rising to the surface in perpetual motion, along with a streak of darker blue that curls its way through the vial in a perfect spiral upwards.  
  
“Right…” Baekhyun says. “So this is…”  
  
“My experiment,” Chanyeol says. The overly tense grin from earlier spreads across his face again. “I don’t know what to call it yet, and I have more in there. Isn’t it great? It’s supposed to enhance mobility and strength for flying, but I’m not quite there yet. So far, I’ve only really been able to enhance speed and overall energy levels, but that won’t mean as much on a broom. It has some odd effects on muscle movement sometimes, but that’s the only major problem now, and this batch seems to be giving me better hand-eye coordination too.”  
  
“So…” Baekhyun says, eyeing the vial. “You’re basically trying to make your own custom steroid. For Quidditch.”  
  
“My own what?”  
  
“Nevermind,” Baekhyun says. He resists the urge to run a hand down his face in exasperation. “Do you have any idea how illegal this probably is?”  
  
“You’re starting to sound like Joonmyun whenever Amber brings him around after practice,” Chanyeol says, tossing the vial up only to catch it again before it falls. He grins at Baekhyun’s look of horror, then clears his throat a little before he mimics a voice much higher than his own. “ _The rules exist for you safety, Chanyeol. As Head Boy, I’m just trying to look out for you._ ”  
  
“I do not sound like him,” Baekhyun says, sitting down at the end of the closest bed. He thinks that he might have a migraine coming on. “I can’t believe you seriously…” he trails off, fighting back hysterical laughter and shaking with the effort as he suddenly finds this whole thing hilarious.  
  
Chanyeol sits down on the bed across from his, passing the vial in between his hands. “You do, a bit.” He laughs when Baekhyun glares. “Stop worrying, I haven’t actually used it in a match, so I’m not technically doing anything illegal. It’s just for fun.”  
  
“How did you even—?” Baekhyun gestures vaguely at the vial.  
  
“I’m not really sure,” Chanyeol says, “I was looking at potion recipes in the library, and I combined some recipes that had the individual effects I wanted. I’ve been keeping a journal of all the changes I’ve been making, because some of the recipes really didn’t mix well at first. But it’s pretty awesome, isn’t it? I told you.”  
  
“You really amaze me sometimes,” Baekhyun muses, leaning back on his hands. His eyes never leave the vial. If it’s not going to kill Chanyeol or get them thrown out of Quidditch, he can trust Chanyeol on this one, maybe. Chanyeol has always been much smarter than he seems, albeit in a very eccentric sort of way. The voice in his head telling him to say no to all of this sounds altogether too much like Joonmyun, and that only serves as further encouragement. “And yeah, it’s pretty cool, I guess.”  
  
Chanyeol throws the vial up again, and Baekhyun watches the liquid inside of it spin, blue on blue. For a moment it hits the light just right, and he can almost see it glow. When Chanyeol catches his eye again, Baekhyun grins, raising an eyebrow in challenge. Chanyeol throws the vial higher and higher, catching it in one hand each time with a flick of his wrist.  
  
The last time he does it, he throws it over towards Baekhyun’s face, and Baekhyun flinches back on reflex. When he opens his eyes, Chanyeol is holding the vial in front of his face, balanced between two of his fingers.  
  
“It works,” Chanyeol says. His smile now is one that Baekhyun is used to, even as he shakes with the excess energy. Then he’s leaning too far across the space between the two beds and falling forward into Baekhyun’s space, laughter bubbling up from his chest.  
  
This time, Baekhyun lets himself laugh with him.  
  
\--  
  
As planned, Amber knocks on the door to Joonmyun’s dorm room at precisely ten o’clock that night. Joonmyun’s schedule is always micromanaged down to the last half an hour. Even though she teases him about it sometimes, he gets nervous when the schedule is broken too far, and she tends to indulge him. She hums as she waits, staring at the metal detailing on the heavy wood of the door. The best part of Joonmyun’s position as Head Boy has been the private room; she had been getting sick of broom closets.  
  
Joonmyun opens the door with his glasses still perched on his nose, and she must have caught him in the middle of homework, because his hair is rumpled in the way it only gets when he runs his hand through it too much while he’s studying. When he sees that it’s her, he smiles and steps back to let her in. It’s the smile that first made her notice him, and even after a year together it’s still her favourite, because it’s soft around the edges in a way that only happens when he looks at her.  
  
“What are you working on?” she asks, walking over to look at the parchment and books spread over his desk as he shuts the door behind her.  
  
“Transfiguration project,” he says. “Professor Jung wanted a report cataloguing Animagi through the century of our choice, recording correlations between them and then discussing the relevant Transfigurational theory. I went to talk her about it earlier tonight and she wants me to flesh out the historical context a bit more, so I’ve been working on that. So far I’m somewhere in the middle of the sixteenth century, and there’s been a lot of interesting intersection with the witch hunts.” He pauses, straightening out his black and yellow tie a little and looking up at her for a moment before glancing away again. “Sorry. I’m rambling again.”  
  
“And just like I’ve said every other time, I don’t mind,” Amber says, stepping forward and pushing his hands away from his tie so that she can undo the knot herself. “I like hearing about what’s interesting to you.” She pulls the loop of the tie up over his head and hangs it off the back of his desk chair, then moves to undo her own gold and crimson one and hang it up beside his. “As long as you don’t develop a lifelong devotion to the field study of Flobberworms, I think you’ll be fine.”  
  
“Flobberworms?” Joonmyun asks. Amber reaches over to undo the first two buttons of his shirt, then up to remove his glasses so that she can set them on the desk. From this close, she can see the movement of his Adam’s apple as he swallows.  
  
“Mmm,” Amber says. “But I don’t really want to talk about them. Do you?”  
  
“No,” he says, at the same time as he shakes his head, watching her undo the first two buttons of her shirt as well. His voice is a little rough. “I’m kind of scared of Flobberworms, actually.”  
  
“Really?” she says, fighting back the urge to laugh, because leave it to Joonmyun to have a phobia of something like that. It’s endearing in an odd sort of way, but a lot of things about him are like that to her. “Why?”  
  
He climbs onto the bed behind him, situating himself against the pillows at the top before he starts twisting his hands in the comforter. “I don’t know, really,” he says, as she climbs over to straddle his legs. His hands come up automatically to rest on her hips before he runs them down her thighs over the fabric of her pants, and she presses a little closer. “One of my cousins used to keep them as pets when we were kids, and whenever he’d visit he would bring them along and I’d have to feed them bits of cabbage, and I _hate_ cabbage, and they were slimy—god I’m doing it again, aren’t I.”  
  
“Still don’t mind,” Amber says, smiling at him as she brings her hand up to cup the side of his face, then watching as his eyelids flutter closed as she leans in. She kisses him slowly at first, because it has been a while since they have had the time, and she wants to make it last.  
  
His shoulders are tense when she moves her hands down from his face, and she wraps her arms around his neck when he starts to respond and kiss her harder, less restrained. His hands scramble to untuck her shirt, and then he splays his fingers across her lower back, cool against her bare skin. When she pulls away to breathe, she bites down on his lower lip, dragging her teeth before she lets go. She loves the sound he makes whenever she does it, because it’s rough and little harsh, and she likes knowing that she’s the one to pull him into something less polished than what he usually tries to present.  
  
He pushes the fabric of her shirt up her back, fisting his hands into the bunched up fabric as it rises. She has to pull away again to try to undo the remaining buttons of her shirt, and she can’t stop staring at the way his mouth is swollen and red now, all because of her. He stares at her, eyes heavy-lidded as he breathes shallowly, until something crashes to the ground on the floor nearby. Both of them jump, turning towards the source of the noise.  
  
“Oh my god—I didn’t—I’m sorry,” someone says. Joonmyun’s hands have already dropped off of her back, and Amber misses the weight of them, even as she scrambles off of him to try to close her shirt again as quickly as possible. Her mind is still hazy, but she turns to look over her shoulder at a bewildered Oh Sehun standing in the doorway with one hand shielded over his eyes. “I didn’t—” he starts, fumbling. “After practice, you said and I—I knocked, but I guess you were… busy.”  
  
He looks mortified, and as Amber finishes closing her shirt again, she figures that is punishment enough. She nudges Joonmyun over a little farther on the bed with her knee, climbing up on his left so that their legs stretch out, side by side. Joonmyun is flushing so hard now that it’s creeping down onto his neck. He coughs awkwardly, pulling a pillow out from under him to set over his lap as they both try to get somewhere close to remotely presentable.  
  
“You can stop covering your eyes now,” Amber says, and Sehun hesitates, but he listens after a few seconds, dropping his hand away from his eyes and leaning down to pick up his book from the floor. Joonmyun shifts uncomfortably beside her as Sehun looks over at them full on this time.  
  
After Quidditch practice earlier that night, she had found Sehun in the broom shed, staring off into space and moving hardly at all. She likes to make a point of offering to listen to the younger team members when she can, and since she plays Seeker, she doesn’t get to talk to them during practice as much as she would like. Sehun is quiet around her, so she just hadn’t expected him to take her up on it, and especially not so quickly.  
  
“So…” she tries, but Sehun cuts her off.  
  
“I, uh, needed to talk to you…” he says, scuffing the toe of one of his shoes against the floor, “and since you said I could I thought it would be okay. Krystal said you would probably be here, but she didn’t mention the part where you… well.”  
  
“Right, I know, I’m sorry,” Amber says, with more bravado than she feels. “Come sit over here and tell me, then.” She pats the part of the bed in front of Joonmyun. He makes a small noise of discomfort in the back of his throat, but she ignores him for now.  
  
Sehun sits lightly on the very edge of the bed, glancing furtively at Joonmyun, who is looking very pointedly at the wall in the opposite direction. Sehun just sits there, playing with the corner of his textbook, so Amber pokes him with her foot, trying to get him to laugh.  
  
“I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what it is,” she prompts.  
  
Sehun sighs. “It’s Jongin,” he says, miserably. “He said I’m useless, basically.”  
  
“In general?” Amber asks, and she doesn’t mean it badly, but she wants to cringe after it’s out of her mouth because it sounds _horrible_ like that. “Because you know that’s not true,” she amends.  
  
Joonmyun squirms next to her, like he’s trying to get her to hurry up. She ignores that too. Jongin and Sehun had looked more distant from each other than usual during practice, now that she thinks back on it.  
  
“With Quidditch, I guess,” Sehun says, finally look up at her. “One second he was staring at me with this weird look on his face, and then he was telling me I’m useless to the team.”  
  
“Ah,” Amber says, holding back a smile, because she thinks that maybe she’s starting to get it. “I’m sure he didn’t mean it. He’s probably just stressed about the Cup. Just leave him alone for now, okay? Let him figure out for himself that he’s being an ass and he’ll come around and apologize eventually.”  
  
“Sounded like he meant it,” Sehun mumbles, but he doesn’t argue further. His eyes dart across to Joonmyun again, and Joonmyun attempts a glare, but it loses all effectiveness alongside his heavy flush. “Okay. Well. I’ll just…” He gestures vaguely towards the door. “… yeah. Thanks.” He doesn’t look at either of them as he gets up to leave, crossing the room as quickly as possible and shutting the door behind him again.  
  
“Well that was… interesting,” Amber says, leaning back against the headboard. “And you didn’t have to glare at him.”  
  
“I think you mean embarrassing,” Joonmyun says, leaning back next to her and then running a hand down his face. “God. What just happened?”  
  
“You’ll make it,” Amber says, nudging his thigh with hers. When she looks over, the flush is starting to recede, and little bits of mottled pink linger on his cheeks. “I offered to listen earlier tonight, so it’s my fault. I’m pretty sure his best friend is in denial about his crush on him, and he’s being a total ass because of it. I know for sure you can relate to that, at least.”  
  
“Not one of my best moments,” Joonmyun admits, pushing the pillow away. He reaches across for her right hand and rests it palm up in his left, tracing over the lines with his fingers. It tickles, and she turns her hand to link their fingers instead.  
  
“I’m not totally sure he feels the same way, but from his reaction, I’m guessing he does but hasn’t admitted it to himself yet. Give it until after the Cup and they’ll be fine.”  
  
“We were fine, weren’t we?” Joonmyun says, after a moment.  
  
“Yeah,” Amber says. She takes a deep breath, and she wants to ask, but— “We were.”  
  
\--  
  
The next evening, Baekhyun and Chanyeol are the last to arrive in the changing rooms for Quidditch practice. Before dinner, Chanyeol had swallowed another quarter of one of his remaining vials of potion, waving Baekhyun off when he had pointed out that the effects from the last time hadn’t quite worn away. Whether Chanyeol has noticed or not, Baekhyun is starting to think that he looks almost jittery now, not just energetic, and it’s starting to make him nervous. After yesterday, he just doesn’t want to try to bring it up again.  
  
“You’re late,” Minho calls out, tapping his wand against his open palm as he stands in front of a large chunk of parchment sticking charmed to the wall behind him. “You can get changed later. We need to go over our strategy for tomorrow first.”  
  
“Sorry,” Baekhyun says, taking a seat next to Taemin on the section of the bench nearest to the door. Chanyeol sits across from him, next to Krystal. Minho taps the parchment with his wand, conjuring up a network of lines and circles in various colours across it. Together, they end up looking more like a five-year-old’s art project than anything else.  
  
Taemin turns to Baekhyun, rolling his eyes, and Baekhyun grins back at him. Minho takes Quidditch very seriously, and Baekhyun would bet ten galleons on the likely fact that he spends more time drafting up these play charts than he spends working on his actual homework.  
  
“Now,” Minho says, “as we all know, Slytherin’s Seeker, Huang Zitao, is fast as hell out there. Going by the 15 minute retrieval record he set during their match against Ravenclaw, we’ll really need to be in top form tomorrow.” He points to the gold circle on the paper, set apart from all of the others, with the tip of his wand. “That means you, Amber, need to be on top of looking for the Snitch—don’t worry about anything else going on. If we can catch it, we’ll have a good shot.”  
  
Amber flashes him a thumbs up from her seat closest to the front of the room, and Minho nods, satisfied, before gesturing to the mess of lines in red.  
  
“Jongin, Krystal, and Taemin, I want you to stay back for a while when we’re done and look through the playbook I’ve prepared.” Baekhyun leans around Taemin to see one side of Jongin lift the heavy volume sitting on his lap up for everyone to see. “Discuss which choices seem good to you, and we’ll run practice drills once we get outside. I’ll be Keeping, same as the match, and this way the three of you can surprise me.”  
  
“Baekhyun and Chanyeol,” Minho says, pointing to the two circles in purple, “be prepared. I’ve seen the Beaters on their team, and one of them had arms that looked like they were the width of my head. I don’t want you to play dirty, but you’re on offense tomorrow.” Chanyeol gives him a mock salute from the back of the room, which has Krystal faking a coughing fit to cover up her laughter.  
  
“And Sehun,” Minho says, pointing to the circle in pink, “I know this practice might seem like it’s not as important for you, but it is.” Sehun looks up, surprised, before he glances over in Jongin’s direction. “I don’t know what their plan will be tomorrow, but their Beaters will be on the offensive as well, so be prepared. That goes for the rest of you too. You two,” he says, pointing to Baekhyun and Chanyeol respectively, “get changed, and do five rounds of aerial manoeuvre drills before you start on anything else. You know where lateness gets you.”  
  
He gestures with his hand for everyone to fill in the rest, and he’s met with a monotonous “to the losers’ bench” that is horribly out of sync.  
  
“Good enough,” he says. “Let’s go.”  
  
Chanyeol takes his time changing into his robes, and Baekhyun follows his lead, glancing at the three Chasers poring over the playbook from the corner of his eye. He’s pulling on his second wrist guard, lingering as long as he can, when they finally exit. He looks up to find Chanyeol standing over him, and he has to crane his neck upwards to even get close to looking at his face. It’s odd, because in all the time he has known Chanyeol, he can’t remember ever feeling so small next to him.  
  
“I think it’s kicked in some more,” Chanyeol says, bouncing on his toes like he had the day before at the lake. “I feel like I could swim across the lake and back.”  
  
“Are you sure that’s a good thing?” Baekhyun asks, eyeing the way the tense smile is back.  
  
“Yeah,” Chanyeol says, practically sprinting towards the door to the pitch. “Definitely.”  
  
Baekhyun shakes his head, adjusts his wrist guards one more time, and follows.  
  
\--  
  
“What is he—” Sehun starts, cutting off as Chanyeol zooms down the pitch, close enough to Sehun that he can feel the gush of the air as he moves past. They have been practicing Chasing drills for over an hour and a half now, and he’s exhausted and sore from sitting on his broom for so long. Somehow, Chanyeol seems like he’s gaining more energy the longer they’re up in the air.  
  
Krystal shrugs, tucking the Quaffle more securely under her arm. “No idea,” she says, “but I could use some of whatever it is right now. Minho is getting ridiculous.”  
  
“Less talking, more practicing,” Minho calls out from in front of the goal posts. “Run the drill again, and once we get it right we’ll call it a night.”  
  
“Thank god,” Sehun says under his breath. Krystal laughs softly in response before the two of them are charging forward to initiate the feint pass play they have been working on. Jongin has been shooting him looks over his shoulder for the entire practice, but Sehun doesn’t want to give him the satisfaction of letting himself be worn down.  
  
It takes them another five tries before Minho is satisfied enough to blow his whistle and signal everyone to land. Sehun descends to the ground first, shifting around his shoulders to ease the stiffness that always hits post-flight. The rest of the team trudges into the changing rooms shortly after, looking just as worn out as Sehun feels. When Jongin settles down next to him on the bench, stretching out his arms up over his head, Sehun stands up to move next to Amber at the other side of the room.  
  
“Good practice,” Minho says, “I think we should have a good shot.” He looks around at each of them, pausing over Baekhyun and Chanyeol, who are huddled into the corner talking in hushed voices. “If you two have something that’s this important to discuss right now, why don’t you share it with the rest of us?”  
  
Baekhyun freezes, turning around and smiling in a way that only makes him seem more guilty. He looks just as exhausted as everyone else, but Chanyeol looks like he has to fight to even stay still.  
  
“It’s nothing,” Baekhyun says.  
  
“Sure about that?” Minho says, fiddling with the strap of one of his wrist guards, then setting it down carefully on the bench.  
  
“Yeah,” Chanyeol says, looking towards Baekhyun for confirmation. Baekhyun hesitates for a moment, glancing between Chanyeol and Minho, before he’s nodding as well.  
  
“Let me tell you something,” Minho says, striding across the room and stepping close enough to Chanyeol to jab a finger into his chest. “I know what messing around with performance enhancers looks like, and I haven’t seen anything like whatever the hell it is you’re using, but I can’t allow that shit on my team. You’ll get us all disqualified.”  
  
“It’s—It’ll wear off,” Chanyeol says hastily. “I mean. It should. It’s nothing, really.”  
  
“Sehun,” Minho says, glancing over to where Sehun is still wrestling his way out of his leather shin guards. Sehun looks up at him, then promptly loses his balance and falls rather ungracefully onto the bench behind him. “You’re in.”  
  
“W-what?” Sehun stutters, at the same time as Jongin snorts from the bench across from him, pulling his school tie over his head and leaving it loose around his neck. Sehun glares at him, and Minho continues, ignoring the whole exchange.  
  
“You’re playing Beater on Sunday. It’s not what you’ve been practicing for, so it’s not ideal, but we’ll have to make it work.”  
  
“You,” he says, turning back to Chanyeol, “are off the team. Until you can prove to me that you’re off whatever this is, I can’t let you play.” Shifting to Baekhyun, he says, “Take him to the Hospital Wing. Get changed and go, now.” When they leave, he directs Taemin out the door to follow them and make sure they end up where they’re supposed to be. After that, it doesn’t take long before the rest of the team is up and ready to leave.  
  
“No practice tomorrow,” Minho says, once he is halfway out the door back to the grounds. “I want you all rested up for the match.” He pauses there for a second, turning his head to look between Jongin and Sehun. “And you two had better figure out whatever the hell has gotten into you, because I’m going to need you to be able to work together. Don’t think I didn’t notice today.”  
  
Sehun watches him leave, followed by Krystal, who shoots him a small smile before the door slides closed behind her. He can see Jongin starting to move across the room from the corner of his eye, and he shoots a panicked look at Amber, mentally begging her not to leave him alone. She winks in response, lingers over the buckles of her bag.  
  
“Sehun,” Jongin says, resting a hand on his shoulder and trying to make him turn around “Look—”  
  
His eyes flick over to Amber, but she doesn’t move, and Sehun is grateful.  
  
“Is this an apology?” he asks, shrugging away from Jongin’s hand. He folds up his robes and keeps his gaze fixed resolutely on the bench in front of him. Jongin sighs, and he’s so close that Sehun can feel the puff of air against his neck. “Because if not, I don’t care.”  
  
“Look, I just—”  
  
“He said he doesn’t want to talk,” Amber says, turning around to face Jongin. “Maybe you should head back for the night.”  
  
She stands her ground, folding her arms over he chest as Jongin stares at her, incredulous. After Sehun has counted to twelve in his head, Jongin huffs, turning around and shoving the rest of his equipment into his bag. The door slams shut behind him as he leaves.  
  
“He’ll come around,” Amber says, swinging her back over her shoulder. “He could definitely agonize a little longer, though.”  
  
“Thanks,” Sehun says, and he can hear the smile in her voice, but he doesn’t think he can look at her right now. “You know, for staying.”  
  
“Don’t worry about it,” she says. “Get some rest, okay?”  
  
“Yeah,” he says, and it feels too loud in the stillness of the room. When he turns around, she’s already gone.

\--

  
| 

“How am I going to do this,” Sehun says, brandishing his Beater’s bat in front of him. He swings too wide, and Jongin has to lean back on the bench he’s sitting on to avoid being hit in the face.  
  
“You’re going to have to.” Minho says, shouldering his broom. “The match starts in fifteen minutes, and we don’t exactly have time to find another player right now.”  
  
“Have you  _seen_  me?” Sehun says, “I don’t exactly look like the guys they usually get.”  
  
“Okay, you guys go wait by the entrance,” Amber says, pushing herself up from the bench near the front of the room, “We’ll figure it out and then be right out.”  
  
Minho looks sceptical, but he gives in anyway, signalling for the rest of the team to follow him. Sehun looks at Amber, and when she smiles at him encouragingly, he sighs, laying his bat down on one of the benches and resting his forehead on both of his palms.  
  
Jongin hangs back, keeping to the bench and bending down to adjust his shoelaces for as long as he can get away with. When the other team members have disappeared, he approaches Amber and gives her a sheepish smile.  
  
“Thanks for this,” he says. “I owe you.”  
  
“Yeah, you really do,” Amber says, but she’s smiling back, and Jongin thinks that maybe that’s a good enough indicator on its own, until she reaches over to punch him in the arm.  
  
“What was that for?” he hisses.  
  
“That was for him,” Amber says. Sehun has his head between his knees now, like he’s trying to remember how to breathe. “Don’t mess this up.” She squeezes his shoulder before she goes, and then they’re alone. Jongin takes a deep breath, moving over to stand in front of Sehun.  
  
Sehun looks up at him, glaring like he’s considering punching him too. Jongin isn’t sure that he wouldn’t deserve it, so he stays right where he is, fighting hard not to look away.  
  
“Is this your idea of a joke?” Sehun asks, “Because it’s really not funny, and I don’t know what you did to get her to do this, but I heard you just fine the first time around and I don’t really need a reminder of how useless you think I am, if you don’t mind.”  
  
“I didn’t say—”  
  
Sehun scoffs at him, shaking his head and then running a hand through his hair. “I’m not doing this again either.”  
  
Jongin scrunches up his eyes, takes a deep breath, and goes for it. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I was stupid.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“I’m sorry,” Jongin says, keeping his eyes closed. “I was an idiot.”  
  
“I’m gong to need to hear that one more time,” Sehun says. Jongin opens one eye this time, and Sehun is fighting the smile turning up the edges of his mouth, but he doesn’t look angry, and that’s more that Jongin had even been hoping for.  
  
“I’m sorry,” he says. “Really.”  
  
“Did Amber put you up to this?” Sehun asks, pushing himself up from the bench.  
  
“No,” Jongin says, “But she did help.”  
  
“Remind me to thank her later,” Sehun says, so quiet that he almost misses it.   
  
“You’ll do great today,” Jongin says, because he means it this time, and because it’s easier to find the voice to say it than it would be to admit how much he had missed him.  
  
“Yeah?” Sehun says. He takes the bat from the bench again, gripping it more confidently than before and swinging it around to test the weight of it.  
  
“Of course,” Jongin says. He smiles at Sehun, tentative, trying to convey that he means it. Sehun smiles back, and for now that’s more than enough.   
  
Jongin plays horribly, losing track of all of their practiced drills entirely and missing most of the Quaffles he’s supposed to be catching. All he wants to do right now is stare over at Sehun, holding onto the knowledge that after this, maybe things can be okay again. He plays in a haze until the announcer is calling out the win for Slytherin at 210 to 80. Zitao rushes by, the Snitch clasped in his hand, and that’s confirmation enough.  
  
Applause erupts around the pitch, filled in with thunderous cheers from the Slytherin end of the stadium. All together it’s enough to make Jongin feel like his head is spinning, and he grips the handle of his broom tighter.  
  
Sehun pulls up to hover next to him, and the roar of the crowd in Jongin’s head muffles down to white noise.  
  
“Next time, I guess,” Sehun says, but he’s smiling, like being here with Jongin again is enough to make up for it. “You were horrible, so I sort of ended up looking all right.”  
  
Jongin’s heart is pounding, and for few long seconds, it’s loud enough in his ears to cancel out everything else. He smiles back.  
  
\--  
  
“Hey,” Sehun says, cutting through the people rushing the pitch to stand just behind Jongin, his chest pressing into Jongin’s shoulder while Jongin talks to Zitao. Jongin leans back into him, almost imperceptibly, and it’s grounding in a way Sehun is thankful for in the crowd. “You were awesome, Zitao.”  
  
“We’ll totally crush you next year,” Jongin adds. “Count on it.”  
  
“Thanks,” Zitao says, smiling softly. “And yeah, right. But I would like to play you again when you’re a little less distracted.”   
  
“What?” Sehun says, pressing forward and trying to turn to get a better look at better look at Jongin’s face. Jongin lowers his head, staring at the grass by his feet.  
  
“Nothing,” Zitao says, “I just—” He pauses, a flush spreading across his cheeks, and Sehun looks over to find Victoria pushing her way through the crowd. “H-hi,” Zitao manages.  
  
“You were fantastic, Taozi,” she says, loud enough that she can be heard above the cheers of the crowd around them. Someone sets off some confetti nearby, shooting it upwards with a loud bang, and Jongin jumps back against Sehun, his hand reaching back automatically to grip at Sehun’s hip. He brings his hands up to cover his face when he realizes what happened, and Sehun tries his hardest not to laugh.  
  
Victoria laughs and ducks away from the falling pieces of green and silver, then lets the crowd push her forward a little, not phased at all. She smiles, pushing herself up to press a kiss to Zitao’s cheek. Zitao flushes, opening his mouth to reply, but nothing comes out.  
  
“I’ll see you at the party later, okay?” she says.   
  
Zitao just nods, and Sehun presses his mouth into Jongin’s shoulder to muffle his laughter.  
  
“See you,” she says, and then she’s gone, waving to a friend she spots somewhere in the crowd.  
  
“Taozi?” Sehun asks, once she has disappeared.  
  
“It means peach,” Zitao mumbles. His hand drifts up to touch his cheek, and he still looks a little dazed. “If you switch my name around… but she’s the only one who calls me that.”  
  
“Aw, that’s adorable,” Jongin says, reclining backwards on his heels, and Sehun lets him rest against his shoulder.  
  
“So cute,” he adds. “Can we call you that too?”  
  
“It has a nice ring to it,” Jongin says.  
  
“Shut up before I hurt you both,” Zitao says, running a hand through the back of his hair until it sticks up a bit, still damp with sweat. He pauses for a second, then touches his cheek again. “This reminds me of this one dream I had before where she—”  
  
“Too much information already,” Jongin says. “I think I know where this is going, and I don’t need that mental image in my life, thanks.”  
  
“I’m going to go to the party or something,” Zitao says, craning his neck to look back over the crowd. “They’ll probably want me there. And maybe she’ll—” He blushes, trailing off.  
  
“Good luck,” Sehun says, and this time he’s genuine. Zitao smiles softly as he waves them off, fighting his way back into the crowd.  
  
“Well that about covers my cuteness quota for the next month,” Jongin says, still leaning back into Sehun as they watch Zitao attempt to escape a group of Slytherins who want to hoist him up and carry him back to the castle on their shoulders. They’re halfway to succeeding when they get lost behind a new group of people, taking Zitao with them.  
  
“Yeah, that was pretty gross,” Sehun says. He’s hyperaware of how close Jongin is now that Zitao is gone. It’s a bit uncomfortable, but at the same time he doesn’t want him to move.  
  
“Yeah,” Jongin says. “Exponentially gross.” He leans back into Sehun with more force after a moment, letting his legs go slack until Sehun is left supporting all of his weight as well as his own.  
  
“Ugh, get off me,” Sehun says, pushing at Jongin’s shoulders. He struggles before he finally shoves Jongin upright again with a well-aimed shove between his shoulder blades. “Asshole.”  
  
“You know you love me,” Jongin says, and the smug look on his face kind of makes Sehun want to punch him properly this time. When Jongin regains his footing completely, he loops an arm around Sehun’s neck and drags him back towards the changing rooms, away from the thickest parts of the crowd.  
  
“Yeah, right,” Sehun says. “Seriously, get off me, I can walk by myself.”  
  
“Suit yourself,” Jongin says. He lets go for a second only to hook his arm around Sehun’s waist, pulling him closer that he had been before, so that they’re walking slightly awkwardly with their hips pressing together.  
  
“Uh,” Sehun says, looking down at Jongin’s hand. “Okay… what are you doing?” Jongin’s fingers are digging into his side, and he’s surprised to find that he doesn’t mind.  
  
“Nothing,” Jongin says. He smiles like they’re the only ones here, eyes crinkling up into crescents. He’s so close that Sehun has to look away, biting his lip.  
  
“Whatever,” he says, a few seconds too late. He can’t stop staring at Jongin’s fingers. “Loser,” he adds, for good measure.  
  
“Don’t rub it in,” Jongin says, laughing. He lets go of Sehun’s waist once they get to the changing rooms, and Sehun stops himself from running his hand over the spot where Jongin’s fingers had rested. He sits down on the bench, intending to take his time. Behind him, Jongin starts undoing his guards and throwing them haphazardly on the floor.  
  
Sehun looks away when Jongin starts peeling off the top half of his robes. “I did well today, right?” he asks, and he doesn’t know why he’s asking Jongin of all people for validation, only that he wants to hear him say it.  
  
“Yeah,” Jongin says, voice muffled as he pulls his shirt over his head. Sehun hears the soft fall of the fabric against the floor, and then Jongin’s voice is suddenly clearer, echoing off the bare walls of the room. “You were great.”  
  
Sehun wasn’t expecting an answer like that, and his prepared retort dies in his throat as he turns around to look at Jongin again. He’s not sure why, but there’s something about Jongin right now that makes him what to capture him exactly like this, smiley and exhausted with his hair all mussed up and falling into his eyes. “Really?” he asks.  
  
“Fishing for compliments,” Jongin says, grabbing a towel from his cabinet and swinging it over his shoulder. On his way over to the showers he ruffles Sehun’s hair with his hand, and Sehun tries and fails to duck away from it. “But yeah, I do. Don’t make me say it again.” He turns, smiling, and clutches his hands dramatically over his chest before he disappears into the shower room. “It hurts.”  
  
“Your ego hurts,” Sehun says, loud enough to be heard over the hiss of the shower against the tiled floor once Jongin has turned it on.  
  
Jongin laughs in response, loud and bright, and Sehun hears it as if there is no space between them at all.  
  
\--  
  
As soon as the outcome of the match is called, Baekhyun dismounts from his broom and heads back to the changing rooms before he can get caught in the crowd rushing onto the pitch. He leaves his broom in its allotted space in the broom shed, then strips off his robes, shaking out his shoulders to relieve some of the tension built up from swinging around his bat.  
  
Something had felt wrong about playing without Chanyeol next to him, and he had missed the wide smiles Chanyeol would shoot at him every time he would get a particularly good hit. He’s not bitter about the loss, not really, because the match had felt like a lost cause since Chanyeol had come up to him shaking after practice on Friday night, but he knows where he should be instead of here.  
  
The Hospital Wing is nearly empty when he gets there, and aside from a young-looking girl curled up asleep in a bed underneath one of the far windows, Chanyeol is the only patient. He’s dozing off slightly when Baekhyun gets there, so Baekhyun sits down softly in the hard wooden chair placed near the head of the bed.  
  
He scans around the room, taking in the white sheets and the floor-length ice blue privacy curtains pulled back around the beds. The arched stone ceilings don’t remind him much of the Muggle hospital where he had last seen his maternal grandma, but the intrusive feeling of cold sterility is the same, and it never fails to make his skin crawl.  
  
He scratches at his arms to make the sensation go away, letting his eyes fall back to Chanyeol. Compared to that last few days, he looks tranquil, sleep smoothing all of the tension from his face.  
  
“Mr. Byun,” a voice says behind him, and Baekhyun jumps in his chair, caught off guard. The legs rasp against the stone floor, and Baekhyun winces before he moves the chair back into place. Footsteps echo across the stone floor, rounding the bed, and Baekhyun looks up at Professor Shim, who looks more amused than anything else.  
  
“Hey,” Chanyeol croaks, his voice gravelly and still thick with sleep. Baekhyun’s eyes immediately jerk back to him. “Is the match over?”  
  
“Yeah,” Baekhyun says. “We lost.”  
  
“Badly,” Professor Shim adds, still almost smiling. It’s the happiest Baekhyun has ever seen him, and it’s freaking him out. “My team played well.”  
  
“Don’t be a smug winner, Changmin,” another voice says. “Just because your old house won doesn’t mean you get to gloat, and especially not in my Hospital Wing.”  
  
Baekhyun and Chanyeol both turn back towards the foot of the bed, where Master Jung is standing, looking oddly pleased. He smiles at them with his perfect white teeth and holds up a bottle of a sludge green potion.  
  
“Slytherin is also my current house,” Professor Shim says, “and that wasn’t gloating, that was a declaration of fact.”  
  
“Don’t mind him,” Master Jung says, moving forwards to set a cup down and pour out a small amount of the potion, which he then forces into Chanyeol’s hands. It smells strongly of something sulphuric, and Baekhyun crinkles up his nose, moving a hand up to cover his mouth. “I know it smells horrible, but I promise it will make you feel better much sooner than you would without it.”  
  
Chanyeol raises the cup towards Professor Shim, as if in toast, then downs it in one go. The look on his face afterwards makes Baekhyun bite down hard on his lip to stifle his laughter.  
  
“A few more doses of this and you’ll be feeling in top shape again,” Master Jung says, collecting his supplies. “That creation of yours did a lot for your physical abilities, but it would have been at the expense of your magical energy if we hadn’t caught this sooner. This potion should help your body towards restoring the balance.”  
  
He squeezes Professor Shim’s shoulder as he walks away, and Baekhyun catches a soft, “Play nice,” before he disappears into his office again.  
  
“Now that we have that out of the way,” Professor Shim says, “I need to inform you that as Potions Master at this school, I’m going to have to confiscate any remaining amounts of whatever mess it was that you created.”  
  
Chanyeol looks like he is about to say something, but Professor Shim holds up a hand to silence him. “There will be no exceptions. What you did was highly illegal, and while certain people—” His eyes flick over to Master Jung’s office door, and Baekhyun ducks to hide his smile. “—have convinced me not to pursue any further consequences, I have taken your school trunk into my possession for the time being. Once you are released you will receive it back, on the condition that you promise not to defame the art of potion making with similar experiments in the future.”  
  
“It was just for fun, Sir,” Chanyeol says. “I promise I wouldn’t—”  
  
“I fail to care, Mr. Park.” A loud cough sounds from Master Jung’s office, and Professor Shim turns towards the door again, eyebrows raised, before his expression moulds back to stern indifference. “Do we have an agreement?”  
  
“Yeah,” Chanyeol says, twisting his hands into his blanket, “Fine.”  
  
“Good. Now if you’ll excuse me—” He turns abruptly on his heel, walking briskly over to Professor Jung’s office and opening the door without knocking. The heavy thud of it closing again echoes through the room, and then is Baekhyun laughing without making a sound, leaning over onto Chanyeol’s bed as his body shakes with it.  
  
“Do you think—?” he asks, pushing himself up again once he catches his breath.   
  
“Dunno,” Chanyeol says, pushing himself up higher on the bed. “I don’t know if I want to know.”  
  
“I’m kind of curious,” Baekhyun says.  
  
Chanyeol exhales, tilting his head up to look at the vaulted ceiling. “It was good while it lasted, right?”  
  
“You were a total idiot,” Baekhyun says, now that he finally has the chance. He smiles despite himself. “I can’t believe I let you convince me.”  
  
“I’m good at being persuasive when I want to be,” Chanyeol says, turning his head to face Baekhyun again, and Baekhyun frowns. Chanyeol’s mouth parts slightly, and he shakes his head. “I didn’t mean it like… I—I just wanted to show off. Honestly.”  
  
He reaches up to scratch at the side of his nose, and Baekhyun wonders if he is imagining the slight flush to his cheeks.   
  
“I guess you got what you wanted then,” Baekhyun says, weighing out each of the words carefully and watching Chanyeol’s face for a reaction. He isn’t quite sure what he wants to see.  
  
“Yeah?” Chanyeol asks, and there is nothing odd about his smile now. Baekhyun feels his stomach jerk at the sight of it, and it feels like a strange thing to have missed, but he has. He bites his lip, looking away from Chanyeol’s face and towards his legs stretched out long underneath the white sheets. Until now, he isn’t sure he has ever really looked at what has been right in front of him all along.  
  
“Yeah,” he says after a pause, dragging his eyes back up to Chanyeol’s face. Chanyeol is still smiling, and too much time has passed since the end of the match to blame how fast his heart is beating on the post-flight high.  
  
He doesn’t know what Chanyeol would say, if he knew what he was thinking now, about Chanyeol’s mouth, or about the way he thinks Chanyeol could cover him completely, if he stepped in just a little closer from how they had been in the changing rooms the other night.  
  
Later, maybe, if he can ever work up the nerve. After today, he has a feeling it might be okay.  
  
For now, he pulls his chair closer to the edge of the bed, curls his fingers around the guardrail, and recounts the match, play by play.  
  
\--  
  
“I’m all sweaty,” Amber starts, as she sees Joonmyun coming towards her once the crowd on the pitch has dispersed a little.  
  
“Don’t care,” he says, stopping once he’s standing with her underneath the shade of one of the viewing towers. His shirtsleeves are rolled up to his elbows, his tie loosened and his first few shirt buttons undone. For matches he tends to makes concessions on his self-imposed dress code, and Amber always loves seeing the results. He had wished her good luck before the match looking no different, but now her stomach twists with heat at the thought of everything she wants to do when they have some time alone again.  
  
“Slytherin played really well,” she offers, nodding towards the mass of cheering green and silver still lingering around the stands before she pulls her gloves off of her hands and throws them on the grass near her feet.  
  
“You did great,” Joonmyun says, reaching over to lace their fingers together. He still knows next to nothing about Quidditch—it’s the one thing he can’t seem to absorb, no matter how much he studies—but she always appreciates how much he tries. “And there’s always next year.”  
  
“You won’t be here next year,” Amber says, before she can stop herself, and immediately she wishes that she could have gone with ‘thank you’.   
  
“I know,” Joonmyun says, frowning. His eyes dart around for second before he’s leaning in and kissing her, out in the open where anyone in the crowd could see. It’s soft and sweet, but it surprises her all the same. Normally public displays of affection make Joonmyun nervous, because he can’t stop thinking about the people who might be watching, and then he fixates until he can’t focus anymore. This kiss is barely a press of his lips to hers before he’s pulling away again. His cheeks flood with heat after, and she pushes herself up on her toes to press a messy kiss to one of them, just for that. “I promise to write, though. And visit, when I can.”  
  
“I’m holding you to that,” Amber says, reaching up to push his bangs away from his eyes. “And thank you about the match. I think my plan worked, either way.” With her free hand, she points over to the two sets of Gryffindor gold and crimson robes on the edge of the sea of celebrating Slytherins.   
  
Jongin and Sehun are standing a little ways off on the pitch, goofy smiles on both of their faces as they laugh along with Zitao. Sehun leans forward into Jongin’s shoulder, gathering in close so that they’re practically hip to hip. Jongin presses back into him, not seeming to notice that he’s doing it. “They made up. I don’t think either of them has a clue about how they actually feel about each other, but they’ll figure it out eventually.”  
  
“You do good work,” Joonmyun says, untangling their fingers and putting both of his hands on her waist instead.  
  
“I do, don’t I?” Amber wraps her hands around his neck and kisses him again, properly this time, until she has one hand caught up in the back of his hair without knowing how it got there. “I don’t know what’s changed to make you do this today,” she says, short of breath when she pulls away, “but I’m really enjoying it.”  
  
Joonmyun smiles again, the soft one that’s just for her. The flush in his cheeks flares, and it’s adorable. “I think it’s the Quidditch uniform,” he says, pulling away long enough to look down from her shoulders to her toes. “I, uh, like it a lot.” He clears his throat, looking pointedly at the grass to the side of where they’re standing.  
  
“I wish you would have told me that sooner,” she says, resisting the urge to laugh, because she knows how rare it is for him to admit to something like that.   
  
They both know that this has more to do with it being the last year that can be like this, but for now it’s easier to shift the focus onto something else. Amber takes his hand in hers again as they start walking back, but she’s not in the mood for an afterparty right now. She veers towards the lake instead, pulling him away from the castle and the crowds.  
  
The first time they did this, it had been Joonmyun’s idea. Now it is a sort of tradition of theirs to sit by the shore of the lake and watch for the mermaids who come up to swim in the warmer water near the surface. It’s a long walk to the best viewing point. Joonmyun had to walk around for hours trying to find it before surprising her for the first time, but it had been worth it—the little outcropping of rock gives them a view that stretches for ages in either direction.  
  
“I’ve missed doing this,” Joonmyun says, casting a cushioning charm and then sitting down on the rock before he gestures for her to sit next to him. When she first met him, Amber never would have pegged him for such a romantic. She makes fun of him for being so cheesy sometimes, but mostly it’s sweet.  
  
“Me too,” she says, settling herself down next to him. The rock has warmed up in the sun, and it gets too hot too quickly, but for this she doesn’t mind so much. She can’t remember the last time that went to sit out here together.  
  
By the time she sees anything, she has lost track of how long it has been, and the light is beginning to turn golden around them.  
  
“Look,” she says, nudging Joonmyun’s shoulder with hers and pointing out towards the middle of the lake, where a head of tangled green hair emerges for a few moments before it disappears again. “Did you see it?”  
  
“Yeah,” Joonmyun says, smiling over at her, and she doesn’t know if he’s talking about the mermaid. She wants to kiss him again, so she does.  
  
For now, being here is enough.  
  
For the rest, they can wait.  
  
---


End file.
